Unearth Boston’s historical demons

Meet Maggie Poppins, long-lost sister to Mary. Maggie is a British nanny too, but she really took care of her kids.

Her motto is “a spoonful of cyanide helps the sugar go down.”

Unsurprisingly, Poppins didn’t make it to heaven after she died. Instead she’s spending her afterlife leading Boston’s Ghosts and Gravestones Frightseeing Tour eight months a year.

As part of a team of deranged ghosts, Poppins guides trolley passengers through Boston graveyards. She entertains and spooks with true stories of war, murder and ghosts — the Boston Strangler, Omni Parker Hotel hauntings and mysterious Boston Harbor deaths.

At times, Poppins is scarier than her stories. Before the tour starts, the caped character dances unabashedly to the “Ghostbusters” theme song, twirling and waving her umbrella at embarrassed Bostonians.

But the hour-and-a-half tour is not just for tourists. “Locals don’t think about the creepy, gruesome things that have happened right where they walk every day,” says Poppins, aka Aimee Rose Ranger, a local Boston actress.

“To find out about those darker things, it’s a bit thrilling,” she says. “How many people eat at the Paramount Deli and have no idea what happened there?”

Photo: Ranger as Maggie Poppins.
The red eyes are a result of a photo flash — or are they?!